However, even our Dreyfus case drew from Lincoln another display of that settled conviction of his that part of his function was to be scapegoat.  “I serve,” which in a way might be taken as his motto always, was peculiarly his motto, and likewise his redemption, in this period of his weakness.  The enemies of the Committee in Congress took the matter up and denounced Stanton.  Thereupon, Wade flamed forth, criticizing Lincoln for his leniency, venting his fury on all those who were tender of their enemies, storming that “mercy to traitors is cruelty to loyal men."(12) Lincoln replied neither to Wade nor to his antagonists; but, without explaining the case, without a word upon the relation to it of the Secretary and the Committee, he informed the Senate that the President was alone responsible for the arrest and imprisonment of General Stone.(13)

XX.  IS CONGRESS THE PRESIDENT’S MASTER?

The period of Lincoln’s last eclipse is a period of relative silence.  But his mind was not inactive.  He did not cease thinking upon the deep theoretical distinctions that were separating him by a steadily widening chasm from the most powerful faction in Congress.  In fact, his mental powers were, if anything, more keen than ever before.  Probably, it was the very clearness of the mental vision that enfeebled him when it came to action.  He saw his difficulties with such crushing certainty.  During this trying period there is in him something of Hamlet.

The reaction to his ideas, to what is either expressed or implied, in the first and second messages, was prompt to appear.  The Jacobins did not confine their activities within the scope of the terrible Committee.  Wade and Chandler worked assiduously undermining his strength in Congress.  Trumbull, though always less extreme than they, was still the victim of his delusion that Lincoln was a poor creature, that the only way to save the country was to go along with those grim men of strength who dominated the Committee.  In January, a formidable addition appeared in the ranks of Lincoln’s opponents.  Thaddeus Stevens made a speech in the House that marks a chapter.  It brought to a head a cloud of floating opposition and dearly defined an issue involving the central proposition in Lincoln’s theory of the government.  The Constitution of the United States, in its detailed provisions, is designed chiefly to meet the exigencies of peace.  With regard to the abnormal conditions of war, it is relatively silent.  Certain “war powers” are recognized but not clearly defined; nor is it made perfectly plain what branch of the government possesses them.  The machinery for their execution is assumed but not described—­as when the Constitution provides that the privileges of the writ of habeas corpus are to be suspended only in time of war, but does not specify by whom, or in what way, the suspension is to be effected.  Are those undefined “war powers,” which are